Reading List Authors A-C

Abercrombie, Joe             THE BLADE ITSELF            9-1-18

                                         BEFORE THEY ARE HANGED         9-22-18

                                         THE LAST ARGUMENT OF KINGS 12-20-18

Abraham, Daniel              THE DRAGON’S PATH     10-30-14

                                         THE KING’S BLOOD          2-7-15

                                         THE TYRANT’S LAW         3-7-15

                                         THE WIDOW’S HOUSE    3-27-15

 l                                       THE SPIDER’S WAR          4-23-16

Abrahams, Peter              BULLET POINT    6-4-19

Acuff, Jon                        FINISH                   6-11-21

                                        START                    6-24-21

                                        DO OVER              7-3-21

Adams, Richard                 WATERSHIP DOWN         2-19-18

Alcott, Louisa May           LITTLE WOMEN                 6-4-17

Alexie, Sherman               THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN   1-12-19

Asimov, Isaac                   THE STARS, LIKE DUST    1-28-14

                                         PEBBLE IN THE SKY          2-3-14

                                         FOUNDATION                   8-19-15*

                                        FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE   8-29-15*

                                        SECOND FOUNDATION  9-11-15*

                                        PRELUDE TO FOUNDATION         9-19-15

                                        FOUNDATION’S EDGE    10-5—15*

                                        FOUNDATION AND EARTH           10-18-15*

                                       NEMESIS               1-7-18

                                       THE END OF ETERNITY    7-2-19

                                       FORWARD THE FOUNDATION     7-18-19

                                       THE GODS THEMSELVES                5-23-20

Austen, Jane                   PRIDE AND PREJUDICE   12-6-14

Austen, Jane                   EMMA                                  6-25-16

Baldacci, David             DIVINE JUSTICE                 12-27-13

                                       THE COLLECTORS             1-11-14

                                       ONE SUMMER   6-4-18

                                       DELIVER US FROM EVIL 8-4-18

Baldwin, James             IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK     5-20-21

Bardugo, Leigh             NINTH HOUSE    12-14-19

Barry, Kevin                  BEATLEBONE      1-11-19

Baum, L. Frank             THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ              10-8-18

                                      THE MARVELOUS LAND OF OZ    1-28-19

                                      OZMA OF OZ      2-11-19

                                      DOROTHY AND THE WIZARD IN OZ           2-11-19

                                      THE ROAD TO OZ              3-12-19

                                      THE EMERALD CITY OF OZ             3-12-19

Beaton, M.C.                 DEATH OF A BORE            1-19-14

Bellow, Saul                  HERZOG                               10-16-15

                                      THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH       8-12-17

                                      HUMBOLDT’S GIFT          8-28-17

Berendt, John                MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL 2-26-19

Berg, Elizabeth             TAPESTRY OF FORTUNES               5-22-17

Blish, James                  VOR       8-7-17

Boehner, John                ON THE HOUSE            6-14-21

Bowman, Akemi Dawn        SUMMER BIRD BLUE        4-24-21

Bradbury, Ray                FAREWELL SUMMER       11-16-14

Bronte, Charlotte            JANE EYRE                           9-24-16

Bronte, Emily                 WUTHERING HEIGHTS    11-19-14

Brooks, Terry                  THE SWORD OF SHANNARA 12-18-18

                                      THE ELFSTONES OF SHANNARA 1-3-19

                                      THE WISHSONG OF SHANNARA 1-19-19

Brown, Eleanor             THE LIGHT OF PARIS        3-10-18

Brown, Jeff                    FLAT STANLEY                2-27-21

Buck, Pearl S.                THE GOOD EARTH            4-4-15

Butcher, Jim                   FURIES OF CALDERON                    1-7-20

                                        ACADEM’S FURY               1-21-20

                                       CURSOR’S FURY                2-6-20

                                      CAPTAIN’S FURY               3-1-20

                                      THE PRINCEP’S FURY                       3-28-20

                                      FIRST LORD’S FURY                          4-16-20

Card, Orson Scott          ENDER’S GAME                 8-20-16

Carr, Caleb                    THE ALIENIST                    6-21-21

Cather, Willa                 MY ANTONIA                     8-27-18

Cervantes, Miguel de    DON QUIXOTE                   2-29-16

Chesterton, G.K.           THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY: A NIGHTMARE                7-23-18

Chilton, Ski                   THE REWIRED BRAIN                       9-15-20

Christie, Agatha             DEATH IN THE CLOUDS            6-23-18

                                       SAD CYPRESS      4-25-19

                                      MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS           7-30-19

                                      THE SECRET ADVERSARY               8-6-19

                                      MURDER ON THE LINKS                 8-20-19

                                      THE MYSTERY OF THE BLUE TRAIN            9-28-19

                                      THEY DO IT WITH MIRRORS        3-15-21

                                      AND THEN THERE WERE NONE        6-7--21

Clare, Cassandra           CITY OF BONES 4-13-19

                                      CITY OF ASHES   4-22-19

                                      CITY OF GLASS   5-6-19

Clark, Mary Higgins     NIGHTTIME IS MY TIME 3-26-08

                                      A CRY IN THE NIGHT        1-6-19

                                      THE MELODY LINGERS ON            2-13-21

                                      JUST TAKE MY HEART        7-5-21

Clarke, Arthur C. & Pohl, Frederick      THE LAST THEOREM        12-26-15

Clarke, Suzanna            JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR. NORRELL               5-11-15

Coelho, Paulo                THE ALCHEMIST                5-7-21

Colfer, Eoin                   ARTEMIS FOWL (1^st 3 books)       2-12-18*

Collins, Suzanne            THE HUNGER GAMES     5-27-14

                                       CATCHING FIRE                 6-24-14

                                      MOCKINGJAY                    7-3-14

                                      THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES             11-8-20

                                      GREGOR THE OVERLANDER          11-21-20

                                     GREGOR AND THE PROPHECY OF BANE   12-15-20

                                     GREGOR AND THE CURSE OF THE WARMBLOODS               2-12-21

                                     GREGOR AND THE MARKS OF SECRET       3-13-21                             

                                     GREGOR AND THE CODE OF CLAW        3-22-21

Collins, Wilkie              THE WOMAN IN WHITE 12-18-16

Condie, Ally                  ATLANTIA            4-10-17

Connelly, Michael         THE LINCOLN LAWYER    1-24-14

Conrad, Joseph              HEART OF DARKNESS     3-5-15

Cook, Robin                   PANDEMIC                                          4-21-20

Cornwell, Patricia           AT RISK                                 5-9-14

Coulter, Catherine          THE COVE                            9-12-14

                                       THE MAZE                           9-12-14

Craig, Erin A.                 HOUSE OF SALT AND SORROWS 11-1-20

Crichton, Michael          STATE OF FEAR                  3-22-09

Weekly Short Stories: 1988 Science Fiction, Part 2

Today I continue looking at 1988 science fiction short stories from the anthology Donald A. Wollheim Presents the 1989 Annual World's Best SF, with selections by the series' editor from the previous year.  1988, sadly, changed forever the way national presidential elections are conducted in America, with hateful and often false innuendoes openly promoted by major political parties against the others' candidates.  In this case Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis, the pleasant enough and competent former governor of Massachusetts, who I genuinely liked, was torn apart during the final weeks of the campaign by the Republican political dirty tricks machine in scathing televised political ads...and the public bought it, easily electing George H.W. Bush in the election after Dukakis had an earlier large lead in the polls.  The lesson from this: wallow in the mud of defamation and lies if you want to get elected...Trumpism is a direct consequence of this campaign.  Sigh, back to the stories, which to me were equally disturbing...

THE FLIES OF MEMORY by Ian Watson

Novella-length, this story has the common theme of "aliens among us", ostensibly peacefully going about their business while the press and popular imagination run rampant with speculation about their motives.  But the walking "flies" have stated their aim: to "remember" as much of Earth as practicable.  The questions then are why, and what about the sections of reality that are suddenly disappearing?  The protagonists shift in this tale, from Charles, an expert on body language hired to determine the truthfulness of the flies' claims, to Olivia, who can see into the future.  I felt the story could have been a bit shorter without detracting from it.  On the other hand, maybe the author had intended it as a novel and cut it down to novella-size, who knows...

SKIN DEEP by Kristine Katherine Rusch

Humans have this terribly annoying trait of settling into an area inhabited by others and then treating the native people and animals as outsiders...this is the story of a shape-shifting native "boy" on a distant, recently colonized world, trying to survive in the midst of suspicion and prejudice.  This is the best kind of sci-fi, projected into the future in an otherworldly setting while providing allegorical themes about the shortcomings of our human nature at home in the present...

A MADONNA OF THE MACHINE by Tanith Lee

Reading this immediately reminded me of the old silent movie Metropolis, where workers are practically welded to the machines they work at.  In this story of the future, humanity has been reduced to working on "the" Machine, which assigns and regulates every...I mean every...facet of their lives, and their names have similarly been reduced to just uncapitalized first names.  But since peter and anna, the story's focus, have only known this life from birth, they see nothing amiss...that is, until a strange female apparition sporadically begins to appear to them and the others.  To me this read like a forerunner to The Matrix, with errors in the Machine's design and programming assigned to a special entity...in that movie's case it's the character Neo and here the "Madonna of the Machine".  Humanity's increasing dependence on technology gets the full treatment here...

Next week: more reviews from Wollheim's anthology covering 1988 sci-fi...

My Current Favorite Albums of 2022

While I've been going through my list of all-time favorite albums, there are still some good ones coming out...2022 hasn't disappointed.  For 2022 my chosen favorite music has been primarily of a small number of album releases by various artists I've come to know over the past few years...and one from 2014.  I should say "the last half" of 2022, because it wasn't until this summer and the release of Regina Spektor's new album Home, before and after that I began to direct my attention to current music...the poor quality of "hits" that radio was airing didn't help.  After that I've listened to other acts' releases: We by Arcade Fire, Lucifer on the Sofa by Spoon,  A Light for Attracting Attention by the Smile, The Alchemist's Euphoria by Kasabian and Pagans in Vegas by Metric.  The Smile features Radiohead's Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood and for all practical purposes sounds just like a Radiohead album...cool.  Metric has just released their new album Formentera, on which I've had trouble finding tracks to my liking.  But I did go back to that 2014 Pagans in Vegas, and it's one of their best works.  I haven't been listening to music off the radio, so my year-end list of favorite songs will no doubt consist of tracks from these albums.  Also, Sufjan Stevens has just released one, in collaboration with someone I don't know named Angelo De Augustine, titled A Beginner's Mind...I'm currently checking that one out.  Good music is out there but you sometimes have to look for it...I don't trust the judgment of radio programmers to present the best songs...

Podcaster Examines Problems with Procrastination

On one of his recent Mindset Mentor podcasts, personal development coach Rob Dial brought up the topic of procrastination, which apparently most of us have to deal with to varying degrees.  But he claimed that habitually putting things off isn't the problem, but the symptom...so what? as far as I'm concerned, the symptom for me IS the problem.  Dial stresses that I should examine the underlying fears preventing me from stepping out and doing the things I had already purposed to do...as usual, he suggests sitting down with pen and paper to work this out.  He also points out that I currently am the product of myriad small habits and initiatives (or procrastination) from my past, weighted on what I did (or didn't do) in the last five years or so.  And then he proposed three tips to help to get on with doing what I really want to do.  First, he admonishes against "negotiating with your mind", that is, once a decision has been made about what to do, don't let yourself down and put it off...which is equivalent, after all, to not doing it.  Second, finish what you start...and take it to every area of your life, even with mundane activities like cooking and then cleaning up afterwards.  And finally, do more than what you said you were going to do.  This always comes at the close of an activity and is a conscious decision to push it a little further...Dial suggests by about 10%.   All of Rob Dial's points are well-taken and rather obvious, yet as I go through my daily walk it's easy to cop out and claim that I just don't have the time, that something else has priority over what I already know should be my priority.  Good podcast, worth pursuing...let's see if I can't implement his suggestions someday...

My #3 All-Time Favorite Album: Kid A by Radiohead

The 2000 RADIOHEAD album KID A is my #3 all-time favorite album although I hadn't heard any of its songs until ten years later when I obtained it and transferred it onto my MP3 player to listen to during my then-long distance (15 miles plus) training runs.  From then on listening to one of these pieces transports me to that time and the different paths I used.  Initially panned by many music critics, it has come to be considered not only as the British alternative rock band's best, but also one of the greatest albums ever.  Still, I think you kind of have to be inclined toward this genre of tech rock.  And, frankly, lead singer Thom Yorke has the kind of voice that can sometimes grate on your ears!  Yet I've grown to love this band's music and look forward to any new release of theirs...and my all-time favorite song (These Are My Twisted Words) is from them as well. Below are Kid A's tracks listed in order of my liking, but the entire album worked for me...

1 MORNING BELL--song's lyrics are about the brutal effects of divorce, but I associate it with my 2010 ultra-long training runs, listening on my MP3...

2 IN LIMBO--the ultimate "going down the rabbit role" song, with a jazzy bent...

3 HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY--"disappear" here has 2 meanings, one to go into hiding and the other as a symptom of social disaffection...

4 IDIOTEQUE--a robotic, dystopian kind of beauty this song has; another great running track...

5 OPTIMISTIC--I later came to appreciate this one, maybe the most "singles" worthy song on the album, more sinister than optimistic in tone...

6 EVERYTHING IN ITS RIGHT PLACE--the album's opening track, perfect for putting the listener in a receptive state of contemplation and reflection...

7 KID A--like Idioteque, a dystopian/electronic song, and with a strange, other-worldly singer...

8 THE NATIONAL ANTHEM--I wonder what words you'd add to this hip/rock/jazz tune to make it ours? Or maybe just keep it instrumental...

9 TREEFINGERS--dreamy instrumental mood piece...

10 MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK--pleasant enough song, but big gaps of silence messed it up on my MP3...

Next week: my #2 all-time favorite album (and one of the most famous)...

Planning on Watching Men's World Cup Soccer Tourney Despite Nationalism

The 2022 FIFA Men's World Cup of soccer...a sport that is called "football" in nearly every other country of the world...is underway with matches in the group stage.  It's held every four years, the even-numbered years not divisible by four is how I like to remember it (or during the Winter Olympic year).  This time around, the little Persian Gulf country of Qatar is the selected site, and the United States...unlike with the previous World Cup...qualified for it.  Not that I'm especially rooting for my country...I probably have more "viewership roots" in soccer with the Mexican national team since I've been a regular follower of that country's premier league since 2014, more than with our homegrown Major League Soccer.  Truth be told, though, I have long been sick and tired of the excessive nationalism in international sports and if you've read past articles on this blog about soccer, tennis, golf, or other sports, you might notice that I have consistently downplayed the national origins of various players or the teams they represent...and I objected to this year's banning at Wimbledon of Russian and Belarusian players because of a war that they had no personal role in.  For this World Cup I have yet to watch a match, but as time grinds on I'm sure I'll enjoy a few...it's going on up to the finale on December 18th.  It's a lot easier following a televised drawn-out sports event like the U.S. Open in tennis or the Olympics when I'm off from work on vacation, or last year, when I was recovering from surgery.  My opposition to excessive nationalism doesn't mean that I won't pick a side of a World Cup match I'm watching to pull for...and yes, I suppose the USA and Mexico are going to naturally be among my favorites although I don't plan on being nutty about it...

Quote of the Week...from Groucho Marx

Who are you going to believe...me or your own eyes?.    --Groucho Marx

The witty, acerbic member of the twentieth century comedy team Marx Brothers, Groucho Marx had a lot of funny sayings...another I like is from the movie Duck Soup: "Why, a four-year-old child could understand this report. Run out and find me a four-year-old child.  I can't make head nor tail out of it."  The above quote I did select sadly has a lot of relevance to today's world of disinformation, conspiracy theories and innuendo. I, like you, am a fellow traveler through this strange time of mass digitalization and nearly universally available news sources due to cell phone/Internet technology as well as a multitude of different "news" channels on television, tailored to reinforce the preconceived notions of their viewers.  Social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, and search engines like Google employ algorithms to discern their users' interests and politics...and then present material that promotes them.  I distinctly remember Trump's 2017 presidential inauguration and the general sparsity of people attending it in person...and his claim to the effect that it was a record-setting crowd.  And then his yes-people went out into the media to parrot that false claim.  About all these mass shootings, the Covid pandemic and the 2020 election, I've seen these issues all for what they were and yet the media is loaded with those promoting denial and lies: and people believe them and not their own eyes!  I'm not sure people in general haven't changed...they've always had this kind of tribalism to them that sways them to accept "facts" that are untrue just to fit in with their group.  What's different is how this omnipresent digital input is affecting how different folks distinguish reality from fantasy...or whether they actually want to...

Happy Thanksgiving to All

I'd like to wish each and every one of you a most Happy Thanksgiving Day today, wherever you happen to be.  It's a time to reflect on what and who we have to be grateful for in our lives, something we (at least I) should try to do more often.  Again, Happy Thanksgiving!

Weekly Short Stories: 1988 Science Fiction, Part 1

Today I begin reviewing 1988 science fiction short stories from the anthology Donald A. Wollheim Presents The 1989 Annual World's Best SF, featuring the editor's picks from the previous year.  For me 1988 marked my first full year working at the Gainesville post office, in the specialized capacity of a letter sorting machine clerk working the late-night, early-morning shift.  I think I can confidently say that I enjoyed that assignment and actually miss working on that machine, which has been long replaced nationwide by automated letter sorting machines.  But back then each of us (twelve consoles per machine) would sit there keying the destination codes for each letter as it passed in front of us, 50-60 per minute.  The fact that I could listen to the radio on my headset made it even better, initially focusing on my local country station and then switching over time to Rock-104.  Good times, good times...that was back when Gainesville's mail processing was done at the Downtown Station, situated across the street from the public library.  But enough of my old job, let's look at those stories...

THE GIVING PLAGUE by David Brin

This is an especially relevant story in today's backdrop of COVID-19, different evolving strains and vaccines.  Here a new blood-borne virus has been detected, and it owes its own survival and propagation to the effect it has on its carriers: altruism, crystallized in the desire to donate blood.  An ambitious and unscrupulous medical scientist narrates this story as he tries to wrest credit from the actual discoverer while trying to determine the scope of this new scourge...

PEACHES FOR MAD MOLLY by Steven Gould

In a not-so-distant future marked by overpopulation and a virtual autocratic police state ruled by those with wealth and privilege...you know, where we're heading...skyscrapers live up to their name as a new subculture thrives on the outer walls, hundreds of stories from the ground where a single false step brings a very long fall and death.  The protagonist has a special mission: pick up supplies from a lower floor...and bring back some fresh peaches for one of his co-dwellers.  But there's a hitch:  twenty of the floors along his way (on the building's outside) are controlled by a hostile gang...and among them is his nemesis.  Exciting plot and a clever premise...

SHAMAN by John Shirley

In yet another dystopian future scenario, a technologically advanced police state has created a social withdrawal to localized gang-controlled sectors in the big cities.  Quinn, accompanied by his group of Cisco, Zizz and Bower, must pass through an urban zone occupied by a militant Muslim gang to get to the "Middle Man" on the way to rescuing a social activist from the controlling government's tightly run skyscraper prison.  The Middle Man has his own ideas about how to fight back against authoritarianism, and they reminded me much of Neil Gaiman's novel American Gods....

SHRÖDINGER'S KITTEN by George Alex Effinger

A young Middle Eastern woman keeps reliving one disturbing scene in her life where she waits overnight in a hometown alleyway to stab (or not stab) a young man who will enter it just before dawn and sexually assault her (or try to).  This alternates with flashes forward when she is an assistant to German physicist Werner Heisenberg, author of his Uncertainty Principle and one of the leaders of the Nazi project to develop an atomic weapon during World War II.  It was hard for me to figure out this tale, with all the jumping back and forth and all, but I guess the main point is the woman tying in Heisenberg's discoveries with her own experiences...which reminded me of the protagonist in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five getting "unstuck in time"...only here it happens in multiple universes... 

Next week: more from Wollheim's '88 anthology...

On this 11/22, Fifty-Nine Years Later

As I mentioned in Saturday's article, I've just finished reading Stephen King's epic time travel classic 11/22/63...for the sixth time.  Although I'm a fan of King's I typically don't reread his stuff like that...what is the case with this particular novel?  I did like his chief protagonist Jake Epping, whose first-person narration is perhaps the best in any story I've ever read.  And the character of Al Templeton...the man who has discovered a time portal that transports anyone entering it back to a specific moment in September, 1958..is remarkable, especially with regard to how he interprets his discovery and applies it.  But after giving it some thought, I think the main thing I took from the book is something that needs no magic pathway into the past.  It's all, after all, a simple thought experiment.  Although Epping and Templeton did their time traveling as 2011 adults transplanted into a mid-twentieth century environment, my experiment has me, with my present so-called wisdom and knowledge, conveniently entering my own distant past at what I now consider pivotal times of my youth...and then acting differently from what I actually did.  So, for example, maybe instead of my poor study habits back then I set up a regular homework routine and religiously adhered to it.  The resulting good grades and improved relationships with my teachers would also lead to different social relationships with my peers...and differing expectations and new challenges.  But would I be well-equipped for all the changes going on around me including possible adversity from my own parents (people tend to be resistant to change in others, even for the better)...after all, the further I progress in my "new' past life the more novel experiences I will have and no way of determining their positive or negative (and possibly tragic) outcomes.  In a way, this is what Epping discovered in 11/22/63...so let's go further on with that thought experiment.  Suppose I take that regret about my past...poor study habits or something else that comes to mind...and since I don't have a time portal to "remedy" things, instead I simply apply the changed behavior to my present moments, here in good old 2022?  And it's here, I think, where I feel the attraction for Stephen King's best novel, in my opinion.  Templeton sets the goal of preventing the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963 and Epping is left to complete the task.  I was in the second grade, just having come back to the classroom after lunch, when the terrible event was announced to us.  At home my parents left the TV on with its nonstop coverage of the aftermath...I think that affected me more than the actual initial news.  After all, I was only barely seven and wasn't exactly filled in on what was going on politically...

Podcaster Emphasizes Gradual Improvement and "Becoming" Over Time

Rob Dial's Mindset Mentor podcast of late has featured some pretty spot-on topics...the last two installments have focused on gradual improvement over time as small, good personal habits accrue and build upon one another.  He emphasizes the importance of envisioning who I want to become, taking pains to write it down in as much detail as possible.  And becoming...as author James Clear has emphasized in his book Atomic Habits...is clearly the preferred path.  On Dial's show this morning he suggests a 1% improvement from day to day...sounds reasonable to me although I'm not sure exactly how to enumerate "becoming": a lot of that habit-changing behavior doesn't always translate well into tangible measurement.  Still, as much as feasible, I get what he's saying: it's important to monitor how I'm doing...and make some record of it, even if it is an imperfect process. It's all an imperfect process, anyway!  He also makes a good point: sometimes we set goals for ourselves, projecting into the future our present capacity for fulfilling them.  But we may be selling ourselves short with our planning in that "becoming" someone with abilities and habits can enable us to tackle more ambitious projects and live on a level that would not be possible today.  Food for thought...but don't think too long before acting...

My #4 All-Time Favorite Album: Illinois by Sufjan Stevens

The 2005 album ILLINOIS, by Sufjan Stevens, is my all-time #4 favorite album...I doubt whether most of you have ever heard of it, though, or even of Stevens himself.  It was the fifth album of this versatile and highly creative, multi-instrumental artist with a subdued-but-expressive singing voice.  His previous album, Michigan, contained tracks relating to different parts of that state and his experiences as a resident there...this has continued to Illinois as well as he gives a rigorous history and geography lesson of the Prairie State with autobiographical and Christian themes woven into the lyrics.  One might well say that this is a Christian work that will never be played on any of the so-called "Christian" radio stations that depend on fundamentalist churches to render judgment on what is "appropriate".  Stevens took up 74 out of the allotted 80-minute space on a compact disc, and still had a lot of material left over...much of which he used for his follow-up album The Avalanche (also excellent).  I first heard of Sufjan Stevens and this album while randomly listening one day in 2009 to what was then AOL Radio, on their alternative music channel, when they played Chicago, one of its more known tracks...that was an experience!  I quickly explored further into his music and found that my local public library carried most of his CDs, which I checked out and listened to.  My "song of the year" for 2009 was another Illinois track: Casimir Pulaski Day.  Sufjan Stevens has produced a wide variety of albums, many instrumental in nature, a few Christmas-themed, others more Christian-oriented and for those containing lyrics, nearly all with an introspective, autobiographical slant.  He's quite a singular artist...it's hard to find another with whom to compare him.  Stevens is a Christian who honestly writes about his real, personal experiences and struggles with his faith...so as I've said before, you'll never hear him on whitewashed, sanitized Christian radio.  On Illinois, the songs tend to have overly long titles (and alternative titles as well), which I've whittled down.  Also, he split the brief instrumental endings of a few into separate tracks, which frustrated me when listening to the album in shuffle mode on my MP3 player.  Oh well, nobody's perfect.  Illinois, or Sufjan Stevens for that matter, may or may not resonate with you, but I highly recommend you check it out to see for yourself...YouTube carries it, I believe.  My favorite songs from it are, in order of preference, Casimir Pulaski Day, Jacksonville, Come On Feel the Illinoise, Decatur and Chicago. Below are listed the basic tracks of Illinois as they appear on the album...

CONCERNING THE UFO SIGHTING NEAR HIGHLAND, ILLINOIS

THE BLACK HAWK WAR

COME ON! FEEL THE ILLINOISE!

JOHN WAYNE GACY, JR.

JACKSONVILLE

DECATUR

CHICAGO

CASIMIR PULASKI DAY

TO THE WORKERS OF THE ROCK RIVER VALLEY REGION

THE MAN OF METROPOLIS STEALS OUR HEARTS

PRAIRIE FIRE THAT WANDERS ABOUT

THEY ARE NIGHT ZOMBIES!

THE SEER'S TOWER

THE TALLEST MAN, THE BROADEST SHOULDERS

OUT OF EGYPT, INTO THE GREAT LAUGH OF MANKIND

Next week: my #3 all-time favorite album...from the turn of the century...

Enjoying My Weekend Off from Work

I've been enjoying my weekend off from work, now on Saturday evening approaching the midpoint of it all...Smokey and the Bandit is playing right now on CMT channel.  Earlier I witnessed a couple of concurrent college football games, one...TCU vs. Baylor...ending spectacularly with a literally last-second Horned Frogs victory (keeping them undefeated and in the college football playoff picture), and the other a dismal letdown of a performance by my hometown University of Florida against Vanderbilt, bowing to the Commodores in yet another chapter to the Gators' horribly inconsistent season.  Now I'm toggling back and forth between Reynolds, Field, Reed & Company and the Tennessee/South Carolina game...looks as if relaxation is the word for today.  I had been strongly considering running in tomorrow morning's Cupcake Run (yes, they actually had the nerve to call it that) in Hawthorne southeast of Gainesville...they offered a half-marathon option among their scheduled races.  But the forecast has been for rain, and I've recently (and foolishly) run a half-marathon while ignoring the weather.  That's all right...early in December there will be a 15K race to check out...if the weather is halfway decent, that is.  On the reading front, I just finished reading Stephen King's epic time travel masterpiece 11/22/63, for the sixth time: guess there's something special to that book!  And now I'm tackling (again) another jewel: his psychological horror novel It.  No, I've been studiously avoiding the movie and/or television adaptations of these two great books...King's writing and my imagination have an excellent ongoing working relationship as it is, thank you.  Well, I see Jackie Gleason's making his appearance, so I'd better be going...

Quote of the Week...from Barbara Streisand

People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.    ---Barbara Streisand

Although renowned singer/actress Barbara Streisand sang these words from the sixties' hit Funny Girl musical's song People, it was Bob Merrill who wrote these lyrics.  On the surface, it's all a kind of feel-good statement...yeah, it's good to have a positive opinion of people, I guess.  And I strongly appreciate the presence of certain, specific people in my life...that is irrefutable.  But to sashay around in life relishing being around folks in general not only isn't a need of mine, but the experiences are usually frustrating if not outright distasteful.  All these social gatherings apparently designed with the lucky "people-needers" in mind, to me are just assembling individuals with their own walls and sometimes aggressive agendas toward others.  We just got a little puppy dog a few months ago and it sees us as its pack, with training largely having to do with making it feel secure in its assigned place (at the pack's bottom, of course).  But those people...of which I admit to being one...have the same kind of continually ongoing struggles about who is dominant and who is supposed to be submissive.  This intrigue for status in imaginary hierarchies plagues interpersonal relationships and ruins the social experience for me.  Sometimes I think people want to get together in concerts or mass rallies or similar settings...or even just sit in a coffee shop...just to be around others without the immediate necessity to work out this pecking order crap.  And yet, as we've seen with Covid-19 recently, the desire to just be in crowds isn't always such a hot idea, either.  Besides, when you're in one of them...these running races I occasionally enter come to mind...the people aren't really "together": they're all divided into their little subgroups, engaging in clannish behavior while regarding the strangers around them with guarded formality. When I see other people, I feel a strong sense of empathy toward them as fellow travelers through life, with many of them going through experiences similar to my own. Plus, we all need each other in that we provide important goods and services in our economy and society...my medical issues last year certainly bear that out.  And our close interpersonal relationships like family and close friends are likewise very meaningful.  But the notion that solitude is bad and it's important to seek immersion around others for its own sake has never caught on with me. No, there's got to be a good reason for me to hang out with others...guess I'm just unlucky that way...

Constellation of the Month: Andromeda

 

Andromeda is a prominent constellation in the autumn evening sky, passing overhead for many of us in the northern hemisphere during the month of November.  Attached to Pegasus (Alpheratz is usually seen as common to both constellations), it is probably best known for the Andromeda Galaxy, also called M31 in the Messier catalog of deep space objects.  This galaxy is visible to the acute naked eye in places unencumbered by outdoor lights, but you can still easily view it with a good pair of binoculars. There seems to be a scientific consensus that the Andromeda Galaxy and our own Milky Way will collide sometime in the distant future, eventually combining to form a new, non-spiral galaxy.  Near M31 are two "companion" galaxies, M32 and M110...better use a telescope for those.  Andromeda represents the chained maiden in the ancient Greek Perseus myth, as the hero arrives on the winged horse Pegasus to rescue her from the sea monster.  All three are "in the sky" as constellations, along with Andromeda's mother Queen Cassiopeia and father King Cepheus.  Personally, I think all the old myths are kind of lame...they should reconfigure the night sky with figures from Stephen King stories, and throw in a few from Tolkien and some other more modern writers as well...

Next month: another constellation...

Weekly Short Stories: 1987 Science Fiction, Part 7

Today concludes my examination of 1987 sci-fi short stories as they appeared in the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Fifth Annual Collection.  For me in '87, I changed jobs three times and moved twice, radical behavior for someone as tied to routine as myself.  But I will always cherish that brief time we lived in Leesburg...I felt good vibes about that place and the surrounding area with their five big lakes and moderate-size towns like Eustis, Taveres and Mount Dora, all connected by good old US-441.  And it was but a short drive to the beach or big city Orlando...as well as to Gainesville, for that matter.  But let's get back to the final stories in the book...

ALL THE HUES OF HELL by Gene Wolfe

Kyle is on the crew of a space mission in a peculiar system, with their ship seeming to orbit empty space when it is really an invisible, "shadow" world hosting a sentient alien life form they are assigned to capture and study.  One of the crew, Skip, becomes unhinged, thinking himself dead. And a woman on board is pregnant, somehow a significant part of the narrative.  But as the story grinds on, Kyle's cyborg nature starts to become the standout issue.  I'd be less than honest in claiming I understood this story or what the author was trying to say: maybe he was trying to say too much in too little space...

HALLEY'S PASSING by Michael McDowell

A truly impressive horror story ranking up there with Stephen King's best, as a mysterious man transforms like a chameleon, stealthily traveling from one place to another as he continually changes his outward identity while adhering to an obscure personal formula for decision making.  Along the way he randomly murders people.  Yes, I said that...didn't I say this was horror?  

FOR THUS DO I REMEMBER CARTHAGE by Michael Bishop

As this story progresses the reader can pick up on what the author is doing here.  He is writing an alternative history of the world while resourcing and renaming important scientific discoveries and technological innovations.  East meets West as a Chinese astronomer, knowledgeable about his own colleagues' advanced knowledge, encounters the story's protagonist Augustine in a besieged city whose walls are threatened by invading barbarians...

MOTHER GODDESS OF THE WORLD by Kim Stanley Robinson

If you are a mountain climber and knowledgeable or interested in the detailed topography of Mount Everest, this story is for you as two different climbing teams race against an opportunistic publicist to the site on the world's tallest mountain where two famous earlier climbers met their demise in the 1920s.  More a novella than a short story, it's a funny tale and probably one for which you might consider slowing down your reading in order to more fully appreciate.  Like Moby Dick with 19th century whaling, there are lots and lots of little details here about how to scale mountains as well as the various sides of Everest, also called Chomolunga, "Mother Goddess of the World".  There's also a lot about the native people in this amazing part of the world, especially the Tibetan Sherpas...and Buddhism.  Good read...

Next week I begin looking at science fiction short stories from 1988...

Podcaster Talks About the Need to Mess Things Up

On his Mindset Mentor podcast (20 minutes each, four days a week), personal development coach Rob Dial tends to repeat the same principles, often packaging them slightly differently.  One recurring theme he consistently stresses is the crucial importance of letting oneself mess things up.  And it's not just because too many of us (myself included) are too hesitant to start something new because we fear we'll make fools of ourselves.  It's important to get past that fallacy, to be sure, but there's another factor to consider as well.  By making mistakes, "cocking it up" as James Bond's boss likes to warn him against, this focuses the brain on the problem with epinephrine supplied by the body to help with the necessary learning. Messing up, or "f##king up" as Dial so eloquently puts it, is an integral part of education.  Which made me consider once again how "ass-backwards" my own school experiences were, with teachers awarding perfection with high grades and deducting grades for mistakes.  One Russian professor in college even told my class that we could say anything in Russian to him, but only if it was mistake-free!  And my experiences while working decades ago with Vietnamese refugees in the kitchen of a local Chinese restaurant supported Dial's conjecture: those who put their pride aside and tried to communicate as much as possible in English...no matter how clumsily...quickly learned it fluently while others fearful of not saying things "right" were much, much slower in their learning. Sometimes Rob Dial says stuff that is affirming, and, in a way, this podcast was as well.  But it's more affirming with what I see in others rather than in what I myself am doing, sad to say...I have a lot of work ahead of me in this area...

Miscellaneous Musings with Daisy This Morning

While Daisy the Wonder Dog stalwartly guards our home from squirrels, crows, other big birds...and FedEx trucks...I'm sitting here ruminating over a random assortment of stuff.  First of all, the 2022 general election came and went, yet six days later we still haven't confirmed that the Republicans will narrowly take control of the House of Representatives and several close elections are slow in determining the winners because of mail-in balloting.  Aside from this, Alaska and Georgia have runoff election provisions whenever no candidate achieves a majority in the general election...and that's just what happened there.  Yet the Democrats will remain in control of the Senate, helping President Biden with his various nominations for the next two years and offering a counterweight to whatever the House Republicans dish out on the other side of the Capitol building.  Our local area elections and referenda served up typically mixed results...I haven't gotten around to checking them all out yet.  As of this writing I haven't heard of anyone trying to overturn election results...I kind of have a feeling that this type of mischief is mainly a Donald Trump thing, and interest in doing it drops off precipitously when he isn't bullying people around for his own ambitions...we'll see what the future brings.  Yesterday, as a couch potato, I was treated to two great, close football games, Minnesota somehow managing to beat Buffalo in overtime (jettisoning the Dolphins into first place) and Green Bay socking it once again to Dallas in a nailbiter...the fact that I was rooting for both eventual winners didn't hurt, either.  As for my wavering running race plans for this upcoming Sunday morning, the long-range weather forecast doesn't bode well, with rain predicted for race time.  I'll wait a couple more days, but if it doesn't change, I think I'll just pass up on it...

My #5 All-Time Favorite Album: Superunknown by Soundgarden

In the early 1990s the debate was on about which band was the best in the grunge subgenre of hard rock...was it Nirvana or Pearl Jam? By 1995 the answer was clear to me: neither, it was another Seattle-area band: SOUNDGARDEN, featuring one of the greatest singers ever in rock, Chris Cornell, along with lead guitarist Kim Thayil, drummer Matt Cameron and bassist Ben Shepherd.  In 1994 they released their hallmark SUPERUNKNOWN, now my all-time #5 favorite album. I didn't know it at the time, though, being gradually treated to radio and video releases from it like Spoonman, My Wave, Fell on Black Days and Black Hole Sun.  Spoonman may have been the coolest video ever, My Wave was my "song of the year" for 1995 with its defiant message to meddlers everywhere, and Black Hole Sun...curiously played on radio as an adult contemporary song although it was probably the darkest on the album with a very scary accompanying video...contained the catchy (to me) line "Hang my head, drown my fear, till you all just disappear".  But I was still unaware of the album itself until visiting my sister Anita in 1994 and noting that my musically inclined nephew Greg owned a copy.  But even then, I wouldn't have heard it except for a quirky twist of fate: a couple of years later, while listening to one of Gainesville's more obscure AM radio stations (on 1390 kHz) play a succession of Doors albums in their entirety, suddenly they started playing Superunknown instead.  Buying the album, I took to it quickly...especially the first eight tracks...and have never looked back.  Superunknown is definitely Soundgarden's best work, combining a generally connected musical thread of their instrumental and singing styles along with some really complex arrangements to form something that they could never hope to match again.  But that's all right: the band came through with this one!  Along with the others are two deep tracks that resonated with me: Mailman and Fresh Tendrils...definitely NOT adult contemporary material.  The original album contained fifteen tracks...some later editions added another song, She Likes Surprises, at the end although I don't think it fit the album.  Superunknown bluntly discusses topics like death, depression, drug abuse and social disaffection, so it may seem a little over the top or disturbing to you...make your own choices, I say. Below are my rankings of Superunknown's original tracks according to my liking...

1 MY WAVE

2 MAILMAN

3 FRESH TENDRILS

4 SUPERUNKNOWN

5 HEAD DOWN

6 LET ME DROWN

7 BLACK HOLE SUN

8 SPOONMAN

9 FELL ON BLACK DAYS

10 THE DAY I TRIED TO LIVE

11 KICKSTAND

12 4TH OF JULY

13 HALF

14 LIKE SUICIDE

15 LIMO WRECK

Next week: a completely different-sounding album as my #4 all-time favorite...

Ran Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K Race This Morning

This morning I ran Gainesville, Florida's free timed-and-posted 5K (3.1 miles) race: the Depot Parkrun, held Saturday mornings, appropriately, in pretty Depot Park just south of downtown.  It's the eighth time I've run in this event, which has been held 152 times so far, and my first there since March earlier this year.  The course is a winding loop, slightly hilly in some places, through the nature scenery.  It takes four laps to cover the distance, and you sign up in advance online and get a printable barcode that they scan along with the little plastic card they hand you at the finish line giving your time.  Then, about an hour later you can see the results online...click HERE for today's.  This morning the temperature was a foggy and unseasonably warm 66 degrees with, naturally, 100% humidity.  Still, it was better than last Sunday's conditions on the Hawthorne Trail when I struggled through the Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon...I entered today's race to build my confidence back up and employ a better running strategy, which I did.  Not even remotely trying to set any personal records, I simply ran a comfortable, sustainable pace under the conditions and finished with a time of 31:38.  Out of the 99 runners and walkers finishing the race, I crossed the finish line 43rd and was the 7th oldest...I thoroughly dig seeing my fellow senior citizens out there!  I still haven't decided what to do about next Sunday's half-marathon being held from Hawthorne, a few miles southeast of Gainesville.  First, I think I'll check out the long-range forecast for that morning and, if the temperatures and conditions look substantially better than they were at the Tom Walker Race (meaning much cooler), I'll probably enter it...

Quote of the Week...from Neil deGrasse Tyson

Democracy...of the people, by the people, and for the people...is so fragile that you can vote it out of existence.  Just select candidates who will only accept the election results if they win.

                                                           ---Neil deGrasse Tyson

It's now coming up on three days since the midterm elections that were supposed to determine which parties control the Senate and House of Representatives...and it still is inconclusive, although in all likelihood the Republicans will regain control of the House after just four years of being in the minority.  Supposedly, the tedious time-consuming mail-in ballot counting is continuing across the country, with Nevada and Arizona standing out among the close Senate races and numerous House races still undetermined.  As for me, throughout my adult lifetime I've seen swings between the two major parties and easily accept how voters can run on emotion and ignorance when casting their ballots...I've been known to regret some of my own votes as well.  But implicit in all this cyclic give-and-take of partisan political power is the confidence we have that the losers of elections will accept the results and allow for the peaceful transfer of power.  Ever since the Bush-Gore election debacle in 2000 I've seen an increased amount of election denial on the part of both politicians and people at large, and this is unhealthful for a representative democratic republic as we have.  It reached a head in 2020 when an actual sitting president refused to accept his electoral defeat...and now within one of our parties a large number only accept elections if they win.  So, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, the narrator of the great Cosmos series...and someone I follow on Twitter...is absolutely right in his assessment, which he made just before the election.  By the way, in fledgling democracies elsewhere in the world, the same thing has happened and is happening...the people elect someone as leader who uses the system once he is in power to change the laws to ensure that he will remain in power: not cool at all here in the good old U.S.A....

Tropical Storm Nicole Passing by Gainesville Today with Wind and Rain

Nicole, hopefully the final tropical storm to affect us in northern Florida, is currently passing through the central part of the state's peninsula on its way to the Gulf of Mexico where, at some point, it is predicted to make a turn toward the north and Georgia and the western Carolinas.  In the meantime, Gainesville is being subjected all day and night today to strong winds and tropical storm force gusts along with continual, strong and slanted rain.  I've been tuned in to The Weather Channel, which has been emphasizing Florida beaches...especially those sections like Vero Beach where the minimal hurricane, now a tropical storm, came ashore and places like Daytona Beach Shores which suffered much damage during Hurricane Ian a few weeks ago.  Still, other than the rain and annoying wind, Nicole should pass through our area without too much trouble...although I'm crossing my fingers about the power staying on in our area.  It developed a few days ago east of the Bahama and began drifting westward through Florida, sending Weather Channel meteorologists up and down the eastern Florida coast.  Melissa and I have stayed a number of times at Daytona Beach Shores and seeing the combination previous damage from Ian with the new storm's surge made a big impression on us.  Locally, Santa Fe College and the University of Florida are closed today and, of course, tomorrow is Veteran's Day.  Nicole is not a very strong storm as hurricanes go, certainly nowhere near in impact as Ian, but it does encompass a very large area and will take a while to pass on through...  

Weekly Short Stories: 1987 Science Fiction, Part 6

Today I continue discussing short stories from the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best SF, Fifth Annual Collection.  1987 was an interesting year for me in sports.  In baseball, the World Series, between the St. Louis Cardinals and the improbable Minnesota Twins went seven games: that's nothing new.  But it was the only time that the home team won every game in the Series, leading all of them into the ninth inning.  In pro football, the NFL experienced its second players' strike in five years...this one in mid-season...and the owners decided to use replacement non-union players (scabs in union parlance) to fill in the missing games.  So, in the American Conference East, Baltimore went 3-0 during this period while my Dolphins, without Dan Marino, went 1-2...and missed the playoffs by one game: what a rip-off.  The only redeeming factor in the season was former Tampa Bay quarterback Doug Williams, now for Washington, thoroughly kicking Denver in the Super Bowl...but that happened in early 1988.  Okay, enough about sports, how about those stories...

EVER AFTER by Susan Palwick

This is dark fantasy, not science fiction.  In a medieval culture, this story reads more like Cinderella with Caitlyn subbing for her, and her "fairy godmother" is an earthly woman of a distinctively familiar, scary persuasion...maybe I should term this tale "gothic fairy tale horror" instead... 

THE FOREST OF TIME by Michael Flynn

An alternative reality in which the United States is broken up into warring sections, the "country" of Pennsylvania is visited, accidently, by a scientist from "our" Earth who has researched interdimensional travel and has lost his way back home.  Different individuals in the military interrogate him in captivity after his rescue in the wilds. It's these interactions that make the story work for me as the reader sees different motivating factors at work... 

THE MILLION-DOLLAR WOUND by Dean Whitlock

My favorite story of today's bunch, it takes the state's exploitation of its soldiers in wartime to its logical conclusion as Billy thinks he got his "million-dollar wound" that will take him out of the brutal ongoing Bolivian war and save him...but he instead is "saved" by advanced medicine and returned to combat duty.  He and his buddies soon see that their loophole of surviving this conflict through injury is being thwarted at every step, as modern medical technology and procedures seem to have the answer to every eventuality.  You might think a story like this is promising, but it's really kinda scary...

THE MOON OF POPPING TREES by R. Garcia y Robertson

The 1890 massacre of the Sioux at Wounded Knee and its leading causes, including the Ghost Dance, form the focus of this tale, told from the vantage point of a young Indian woman caring for an elderly shamanic Indian man.  Their dreams are entangled with modern physics of the relativity sort, recognized by a white Quaker at the local school.  He helps them as they embark on a vision quest into the forbidden Black Hills.  And then there is the Tachyon, which really sends this story deeply into the science fiction realm...

DINER by Neal Barrett, Jr.

Where are the birds and why are there so many annoying bugs? This question and others are eventually answered as a man in a near-future western Gulf coast fishing town lives his daily existence in poverty along with the other townsfolk...the food, drink...even cigarettes...are all substandard, but they get by.  And then there are the Chinese functionaries and soldiers who exercise authority over them.  Implied is a future conflict between the Soviet Union and the U.S.A. that's leaves the Chinese in control to pick up the pieces and reorganize the world as they envision it...

Next week I conclude my look at short science fiction from the year 1987...